Monday, 29 April 2013

Bride of Chucky (1998) - ★½

I don't mind horror movies that transition to comedies, at least that's what I think director Ronny Yu has tried to do with the Childsplay franchise. Bride of Chucky just isn't very funny or scary. It tried to be a modern Bride of Frankenstein and it could have worked well. I'm guessing they had a small budget, because they certainly didn't cast the film very well. The one redeemable quality of the movie was Jennifer Tilly. She was pretty funny and I loved her voice.
The serial killer who used voodoo to become a Chucky doll (Brad Dourif) had a girlfriend before he died. Her name was Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly), a sexy and sociopathic woman who murders people for yucks. She loves Chucky, so she manages to get him back, patch him up and bring him back to life. They get into a fight and she turns into a doll. Together, they concoct a scheme to turn them both back into humans. It's a 'wild' ride that follows the predictable conventions that plague almost every horror movie from the nineties.

I will be honest, the first Childsplay movie scared the bajeebuz out of me. When I was a child, I had a nightmare that my cabbage patch doll was eating my foot while one of my toy trolls held me down. Long story short, I've always had a problem with human like dolls. Bride of Chucky just looks comical because the mouths of the dolls don't always match up with what they're saying. It makes it abundantly clear that they are just mechanical dolls in a movie, which pretty much ruins the mood in every scene.

Katherine Heigl is in this movie. She's not a bad actress now (even though her movies stink), but holy cow she was terrible here. It's a B-Grade 90s horror, but jeez! John Ritter was funny though, playing the police chief and father of Heigl. All performances were bad, even Tilly's. That's kind of what made it a comedy. I enjoyed myself some of the time, which has to count for something.

Yeah, this movie's not worth the watch unless you're a fan of horror and comedy crossovers. I watched this movie because I'm a fan of Tilly, so that's my excuse. This movie doesn't take itself too seriously, which is why I don't hate it. In the end, it's not entertaining enough to be a decent B-Grade horror flick. It's a bad movie, but it may be entertaining depending on your taste in movies.

I thought Seed of Chucky was at least half a star better than this. Simply because although Seed of Chucky wasn't very funny, it had its moments and didn't take itself too seriously. It became a comedy rather than a horror/comedy, which is where they went right :)